Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Goodbye kisser
Sailor in iconic V-J Day pic in New York dies aged 95
THE American sailor photographed as he swept a nurse into his arms and kissed her full on the lips in Times Square on V-J Day has died, aged 95.
George Mendonsa’s daughter, Sharon Molleur, said her father fell at the Rhode Island care home, where he lived with her mother, had a seizure and died on Sunday.
Alfred Eisenstaedt photographed him kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental assistant in a nurse’s uniform, on August 14, 1945.
The photo became iconic after it was printed in Life magazine.
Mr Mendonsa always maintained he was the sailor kissing Greta, who died in 2016, aged 92, but could never convince Life.
Facial recognition and experts in photography and forensic anthro- pology declared he was the person in the shot. Author Lawrence Verria, who wrote about the photo, said: “The evidence is so overwhelming. There really is no doubt.”
Mr Mendonsa told Verria that after a Kamikaze attack on the USS Bunker Hill, the ship pulled alongside the hospital boat, Bountiful, and he watched from the helm as the nurses worked on the sailors.
“They were in a bad way,” he kept saying as he told the story to Verria.
He was in New York, on leave, when the end of the war was announced and remembered the women in white. Verria said: “He sees the nurse, he can’t help himself. It’s what everybody was doing, kissing and hugging.
“As soon as the kiss was over, they went their separate ways.”